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When canonical talks binaries, one assumes they mean DPKGs. I cannot say if it is legal to restrict their use or not. That they are containers for GPL software may or may not be relevant.

Furthermore Vim is 100% right with regards to restricting repositories. Those are THEIR servers. They can restrict them all they want. An analogy: if you kept a stock of CDs with GPL software on them in a shed and let people come and go as they please to take a CD, but only if they agreed to stay for a cup of tea too, would that be GPL violation? No. To suggest so is patently absurd.

As to the tea example ...

That would not be a violation because the obligation is created before the fact. I've accepted the promise to conduct a transaction in the near future and given you a copy of software in consideration of that promise.
If I also require you to distribute copies to your friends only if the promise to come buy tea from me, that is a GPL violation, meaning that my distribution is not authorized by the GPL and the distribution itself would be a copyright violation on my part and the contract would be void. Furthermore if I knew or was reckless in not knowing this and accepted your consideration anyways, then I would have just committed a fraud against you.

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Just a small comment. The contents and inner working of deb packages is publicly docummented in Debians wiki. They invented the system, actually. It's also in Ubuntu's wiki. There's no need to reverse engineer it to find out what you found, as it's public information already.

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Just a small comment. The contents and inner working of deb packages is publicly docummented in Debians wiki. They invented the system, actually. It's also in Ubuntu's wiki. There's no need to reverse engineer it to find out what you found, as it's public information already.

Nonetheless there's something to be said about personal first-hand knowledge.

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What is with branding? I don't have a Mint system currently to test, but are there packages on Mint that contain Ubuntu branding? I bet there are, since Mint has full access to the Ubuntu repositories. I mean, even the useragent of Mint's default browser Firefox identifies as Ubuntu, not as Mint.

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Finally caught up on this whole thread, but will throw in some thoughts;

@Luke

Unless Wayland and Mir become much faster than compositing X on small devices, tablets and phones will have continue to have real performance issues. That's why the first ubuntu phones used Android's "surfaceflinger" display server. I suppose a nonaccelerated X could be used with a QT-based Unity 2d fork, but all those tablets and phones were intended from the start for accelerated graphics.

Any of Nokia's Maemo based Internet Tablets or the N900 and N9 use Xorg as it's display server and were plenty fast. The N9 being extremely slick. The first few builds of SailfishOS for the Jolla phones used it as well, but is now using Wayland. So yes, even old Xorg is fast enough for mobile devices. There never was any 'performance' issues on them. Especially after doing some nice transition tweaks, they were really smooth.

@Ubuntu vs GPL
Yeah, pretty much it's all been said well. Ubuntu can't pull the plug on other distributions using their binaries. They can create a login for their own repositories, but then no one would use them anymore. There is a Samba Enterprise site out there where you have to register to get access to their repositories, and Samba is GPLv3. Again, they provide source as well, though. http://www.enterprisesamba.com/

Plain and simple, Canonical is wrong. The most they can do is whine about their trademark (Ubuntu) being used in Mint. If Mint started doing what CentOS does and just rips all naming and logos out of Ubuntu's packages and builds them on their own servers, then Ubuntu couldn't do anything about it. But then again, why wouldn't Mint just drop their Ubuntu based one and only support their Debian based efforts?

@the original topic of the thread.
In my mind it's quite simple. Debian has a VERY clear method of choosing what software is built into their repositories. Ubuntu has the sections of main (supported), multiverse (random stuff, non-supported) and universe (more random stuff? more non-supported). Debian has main (supported), non-free (supported, non free (as in freedom) licensed), and contrib (supported, generally installers for closed stuff). Supported simply means that if you had a support contract with Canonical, they really only will help you with things in main. Anyone who was with them for a long time will probably remember that universe and multiverse weren't even enabled by default. Everything under Debian is equally supported.

Debian is simply a better base for distributions to use. You know they're never going to sue. They are slow to adopt the latest and shiniest technologies (in fact, instead of settling on systemd or upstart, I recently saw a new package enter Sid called 'init-select' for selecting which init method you wish to use. I wonder if the plan is to integrate that into the installer.) So with Gabe saying it was due to legal issues, it's probably as simple as, you can TRUST Debian to not screw you. Shuttleworth has recently done some rather public displays of "I'm the best, and everyone should pay me!!!" type actions, which is probably why Vavle looked elsewhere. I aslo find it hilarious that sometime within the last few months, both Debian and Mint have surpassed Ubuntu on distrowatch.com as the most viewed pages. Ubuntu used to be WAY above everyone else. Not so much anymore (granted Debian is just barely above it, but it is on the chart within the last 6 months). Last time Ubuntu was on the top of that list was 2010 before Mint was released. So you can kind of see why Ubuntu is wanting a piece of Mint Pie.

leech

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In my mind it's quite simple. Debian has a VERY clear method of choosing what software is built into their repositories. Ubuntu has the sections of main (supported), multiverse (random stuff, non-supported) and universe (more random stuff? more non-supported). Debian has main (supported), non-free (supported, non free (as in freedom) licensed), and contrib (supported, generally installers for closed stuff). Supported simply means that if you had a support contract with Canonical, they really only will help you with things in main. Anyone who was with them for a long time will probably remember that universe and multiverse weren't even enabled by default. Everything under Debian is equally supported.

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On being leeches, one could say the same about Mint, they enjoy the building farm Ubuntu provides. Although they'd be building anyway, having an extra use for the product doesn't harm anyone.

Thanks for the correction. It's been a few years since I really bothered with Ubuntu. After the various fiascos of trying to go from one release to the next, that don't exist in Debian Stable -> to newer Stable.

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Regardless of the distribution. I'm more disappointed that there is no 64 bit Steam client. I am also finding steam is feeling more buggy than it has been in the past.

Except that there's still 32-bit games on there which 32-bit computers still run. That being said, I wouldn't mind it if they ended up creating a legacy steam client for the 32-bit computers and then just focus on 64-bit.